


Drowning

by Egleriel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: AU, Don't mess with eldritch forces children, F/M, Post-ADWD AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-11-07 18:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20821910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Egleriel/pseuds/Egleriel
Summary: As Winterfell makes its last stand, Lady Sansa follows her people south with her sworn shield.





	1. Chapter 1

Beyond the treetops, the eastern horizon glowed for the first time in a moon and a half – not with the dawn that would end this Long Night, but with lightning. White light blossomed in eerie bursts along the skyline, their tendrils stretching further with every minute that passed. Dread coiled in Clegane’s stomach. That was no normal storm out there, far off on the Narrow Sea. There was only one thing that could cause so much movement out there, and _that_ wasn’t due for days. If their information was correct, that is.

Neither of them spoke as they reached the treeline, where a plain rolled between the forests of the North and yawning emptiness of the Neck beyond. Somewhere out there trudged the survivors of the North. They were the folk who could not serve in the last stand at Winterfell: wildlings and northerners, camp followers and greybeards, wounded fighters and women with child, all walking the Kingsroad to take refuge in the Riverlands. If Winterfell was lost, at least its people could live on in some fashion, with young Rickon Stark at their head.

Lady Sansa was due to catch up with the rearguard, but so absorbed was she in directing the siege preparations that she delayed until the last possible moment. Clegane had felt more than half a coward as they rode away from the trenches and camp-forges; a glance at the lady and her grim bearing had swiftly reminded him of the dangers of his own path.

They were half a day’s ride from the forest when the wind slammed into them like a brick wall. It was relentless, no fickle breeze but a continuous flood of air that nearly drove Lady Sansa from her saddle. The air itself felt moist and cool, like a breeze off the sea in winter. Above them the thunderheads barrelled across the dark sky; tongues of lightning flashed closer to them than ever.

Sansa reined in her mare and turned, slowly, towards him. The unevenness of the light gave her face an ethereal quality, her anguish graven deeply on her face. It seemed she shared his suspicion. 

“Shelter,” Clegane roared into the gale. “We should get to shelter.” 

He wasn’t convinced that the words had reached the girl, but it seemed the message did. The smell of rain was in the air now, and if the lightning and the wind were any guide, this would be no normal downpour. The question was whether they still needed to spare the horses for the rest of the journey. His gut told him that a couple of blown mounts were like to be the least of their problems. In fact, they might be better off turning around and riding for high ground.

Clegane had never seen a stormfront like it. Not the squalls that battered Lannisport in autumn, nor the fierce tempests of Shipbreaker Bay filled the sky like this. It was coming. The only question was how soon it would hit.

When the first spits of rain began to patter down, Clegane abandoned any hope of making it to their planned stopover. There were no cottages or farmsteads to be seen from the road, but by pure chance, as the rain transitioned from heavy drops to a sheeting sleet, a low-slung inn loomed from a copse close to the causeway. Its thatch slumped inwards in the southern wing, but it would have to serve.

The room stank of rotting straw, but seemed mostly dry. Abandoned buildings here were quite different from those he’d slept in on campaign in the south. They tended not to be stripped by marauders: the bunks in the north wing were still clothed and the bar was still stocked. There was even wood stacked by the central hearth. Here in the north, in winter, food was the only thing of value and of that the inn had none. 

Clegane dragged two bunks nearer to the hearth while Lady Sansa got a fire going. There was no need to speak. He dropped a blanket around her shoulders once she shrugged off her sodden mantle, and though both would have been glad of a change of clothes, they had brought no spares. They dined on dried beef from their packs, and Clegane mulled a pot of cider to warm them further.

“They’ve betrayed us,” said Lady Sansa hollowly. Cold air and long silence rendered her as croaky as Clegane.

“Might be.”

She didn’t respond for a long time. They refilled their cups.

“_Might_ be?” Sansa repeated. “Do you truly believe that?”

Clegane shrugged. “I’m not the one who made a pact with a fairytale creature. Fuck knows what they’re up to.”

It was only when Clegane returned from feeding the fire that he realised Sansa was sobbing, soundlessly. He sat gingerly on the edge of her bunk and wrapped an arm around her. When they woke, hours later, to the clamour of thunder, he found they were in the same position.


	2. Chapter 2

They woke in eerie silence, only the trickle and drip of runoff from the thatch giving any hint of the storm they'd sheltered from. There was a pregnancy about the quiet though; something in the air smelt of danger.

Sansa pulled herself out of his arms and got to her feet. Clegane rubbed his tired face and yawned, throat raw from a night of breathing cold damp air. When he'd finished stretching, he realised the Little Bird was shaking out her furs. He met her eyes and she paused in her efforts. Her gaze hardened. They both knew it wasn't safe out there - but it seemed safety was consigned to the past from now on. The die seemed to be cast already: they might already be in the path of the disaster, with no time to escape. It wasn't _due_ for days yet. They were _supposed_ to have had time to cross the Neck with the rest of the North, and now...

Resigned, Clegane wrapped himself up too, and together they headed out into the slush. 

They walked at first, Sansa making for a hilltop that looked much nearer than it proved to be on foot. There'd been no sense taking the horses in these conditions: the rains had washed the snowdrifts into a land that was wet and boggy to begin with, and it was too easy to lose a mount to a turned ankle. The hilltop yielded views of a glassy expanse of rain- and meltwater where yesterday had been an empty plain. Much higher and the Kingsroad would have been underwater, too; if the biggest drifts melted it was like to flood yet, but for now it peeped a few inches above the waterline as a causeway threading through a vast lake.

Eventually they doubled back for the inn, their horses and the Kingsroad. It was as they were mounting that the rumble began: an unending, echoing thunder that filled the sky. Clegane saw Sansa's shoulders stiffen and he seized her wrist. She peered up at him, her expression inscrutable. There was a wildness about the girl that he couldn't remember seeing in her before. Her face was pallid, her skin lacking its usual radiance; in her eyes was something fey and reckless that he'd seen in winesink gamblers that had got in too deep, in cornered men who'd rather fight him pointlessly and die when there was no need. Rather than answer his unasked question, Sansa tugged her hand from his grip and swung into the saddle. 

After all these years of fearing fire, Clegane was starting to wonder how much worse water might be. What might it feel like to see a mountain of water rush towards him? In fact, no, not a mountain. More like a mountain range. He could admit to himself that he was curious to see magic - real magic, from the oldest legends - at work, even if he only got a glimpse before the same magic sent him to whichever hell kept a place for him. He was careful to ignore the _other_ compulsion that kept him at Sansa's side. _That_ was even more pathetic and fanciful than a boyhood love of stories.

The rumble kept strengthening until Clegane could feel it in his teeth, and on they rode. Lightning streaked the sky in the south, but any thunder was lost in the avalanche of sound all around them. He slapped his horse's neck as reassuringly as he could, the downward glance drawing his attention to the ripples at the water's edge. Even the floodwaters were trembling now. The little bird picked up some change that he couldn't then, starting in her saddle and turning to him. For the second time in as many days her words were lost, but she put her heels into her mare and tore up the Kingsroad. A bit further on, it rose up out of the marsh to skirt a ridge, then dipped down again. Clegane drove on his own horse, heart in his mouth, but when she reined up at the top of the hill-

He wasn't prepared for the sight.

It wasn't clear to Clegane how long the rumbling continued. Hours, maybe. The view laid out before him didn't change in that time, though it was occasionally veiled by cloudbursts near or far. Where the Neck should have been was a continuous expanse of rough sea from east to west, stretching before him to the southern horizon. 

"It's done, then," he rasped, after the noise stopped. "The Hammer of the Waters."

"It seems there was enough magic in the world after all," said Sansa quietly.

It was all the bloody Dragon Queen's fault. She'd taken one of her beasts into the far north to seek out the Others, and in riding it across the Wall she'd broken the last remaining strand of the agreement between the Others, the Children, and the men of Westeros. The Wall's magic was broken and the dead swarmed south. 

The Children had spoken of a great sorcerer in one of their groves, one they claimed had Stark blood and the knowledge all of the First Men down through the millenia. He could save them, they promised. He could lend them the strength to bring down the Hammer of the Waters for a third and final time: to finish what they'd begun when the Andals landed on their shores, when the Children turned the Neck into a swamp. They had broken Westeros into an archipelago so that they failed to defeat the Others at Winterfell, at least they could die knowing that the other six kingdoms were safe.

Sansa reached across the gap between their mounts and squeezed his arm. Her touch made him startle.

"Let's go back," she said. "It's cold."


	3. Chapter 3

"How far does it go?" he asked over the crackling of the fire.

Sansa took a deep draught of her wine. It was vinegary stuff, cheap fare from one of the Free Cities by Clegane's guess, but it was mellowed a good deal after mulling with a few brittle sprigs of thyme.

"Maester Henly guessed the whole of the Neck, obviously," she began softly. "The valley of the Green Fork has become a seaway. The Vale will be an island now, and the Twins, Saltpans, and Maidenpool are all at the bottom of the sea."

"Their people?"

"We sent ravens. Lots of ravens. I should have asked whether we got replies."

He wondered whether Elder Brother would have heeded the warning, had he survived their trip into the Vale. The heaviness in his tongue was Elder Brother's fault: since Clegane's time on the Quiet Isle, he'd lost his stomach for drink - and this night it was hitting all the harder for the lack of food in his belly. He cursed the old bastard as he swayed towards the corner where the pisspot lay.

The wine had loosed the little bird's tongue, though. She didn't even seem to mind his company here at the end of the world. Warmth and drink and firelight had put the brilliance back in her face, and there were worse things for a man to look upon.

"What about Riverrun?" he slurred on his return.

"It's one of the few places in the Riverlands that we're sure should be safe. Harrenhal will either be at the shoreline or just off it."

"And the North is an island," Clegane rasped.

"And the North is an island," sighed Sansa, raising her cup in toast. They drained them. "The gods alone know if it was worth it."

Clegane snorted. "Tell me, little bird. What would be worth _the end of the world_?"

Sansa looked at him intently, something in her eyes that Clegane couldn't identify. "The world hasn't ended. We're still right here." She refilled his cup with wine. "You're still here with me." When she passed the cup back to him, she let her fingers brush his and didn't take them away. "And we're not dead yet."


	4. Chapter 4

Sandor woke with a searing headache. His mouth tasted sour, his tongue felt heavy, and his groin ached - not that he had any regrets about the latter. Lady Stark was curled against his shoulder beneath the furs, her hair tangled but gleaming in the light of morning. 

It seemed impossible, but it had happened. She had whispered sweet things and then bedded him. There could be no question of who had begun the encounter, for Clegane was not so foolhardy as to reach out to the girl of his own volition, no matter how much he wanted to. Not in that way. Not after last time he'd tried, and scared himself even more than he'd scared her.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he started to think about her reasons. They were going to die here, most like. Might be that she wanted to find out what all the fuss was about before she died. He was finding it hard to understand the fuss about maidenheads himself. As far as he knew, he'd never been with a maiden until last night, but now he wasn't so sure. Clegane had been led to believe that a woman suffered and wept during her first time - if he'd known he was Sansa's first, he'd have proceeded with a good deal more care. Yet she'd seemed to enjoy it well enough, right from the start. Mayhaps the wailing and pain just meant the maid was unwilling, and putting it down to the female body made a man feel less like a raper. That would be just like the nobility, to make it the woman's fault.

Clegane called to mind the way her body had felt under his hands, her skin and her curves soft and smooth, if not so rounded as he'd imagined. He'd never imagined being with her in the middle of the Long Night, them both half-starved at the edge of the world. They'd never know how far the other northerners made it before the Hammer of the Waters fell on them. They'd learn of the result at Winterfell only if the Others brought them the news before the inn's wine and fuel ran out. He studied her face, half in shadow, her cares smoothed away in slumber. If they could find something pure, something _good_, in each other before the end, then who was Clegane to go against it? Who was he to deny Sansa anything she asked?

He sat up, electrified.

"Sansa. Wake up."

Her brow furrowed and she stirred, rubbing her face into the blankets.

"The sun is _up_, Sansa."

They began retracing their steps northward before Clegane's hangover had abated, and the glare of new winter sunlight off the puddles and floods did little for his mood. They moved as swiftly as the wet ground and their horses allowed: Sansa was desperate to see her home again. Desperate, he knew, to find out how many of her kin and allies had survived the fight. At journey's end they might find Arya's funeral; that turned his stomach in a way he hadn't felt since he was a boy, back when he had to bury his own sister.

On the second day he spotted a reptilian shadow against the clouds, moving south at speed. Clegane shuddered. Unnatural beasts. One-and-thirty years of life had failed to prepare him for this strange new world, with its magical cataclysms, its Others and dragons, its high ladies crawling into his arms in the night.

All was changed now. Sansa might be the last of the Starks - Queen in the North, or Lady of Winterfell. But what would that mean with the world broken, if most of her people had been washed into the Sunset Sea and the rest of Westeros lived in terror of northern sorcery? The Dragon Queen might even still live, and so might Jon Snow. They commanded wild peoples from every part of the world in their armies, but Clegane couldn't guess who they'd try to conquer next.


	5. Chapter 5

Jon embraced his eldest sister in the Winterfell godswood, though his splinted leg made the motion awkward. Arya glanced from Clegane to Sansa and back, then gave him a look of disgust. He grinned back at her. 

"Rickon?" Clegane heard Sansa ask.

"Safe at Riverrun, thanks to the crannogmen and Shaggydog. Daenerys started out before the raven reached us, but I'm sure she'll bring him home if Drogon allows it."

Judging from the blush in Snow's cheeks when he mentioned the dragon queen, Clegane thought he might not be the only one with tastes above his station.

"I was sorry to hear about Tyrion on my way in. And his dragon. That must have been hard on the queen."

"We couldn't have done it without him," said Jon heavily. "We'd still have been digging traps when they arrived if not for Tyrion. I'm so sorry you had to find out from someone else. I know that you-"

"I was his dear friend, Jon, but not his wife in truth," Sansa interrupted, raising a hand. "It gives me no pleasure to learn of his death, but I am proud that he distinguished himself in a good cause in the end."

"Of that, there can be no question," said Jon with a curt nod. "I thought we'd lost you, too."

"If we'd been half a day further on, you would have," Clegane rumbled. 

Jon gave him a cool look, but Sansa spoke first. "How soon will the coasts be mapped?"

"Ser Davos is on the case. Asha Greyjoy has offered her ships, but only if she's allowed to command them and start the survey in the Iron Islands."

Clegane didn't think that sounded particularly unreasonable, but supposed the Starks had ample cause to keep the Greyjoys on a tight leash. _Fuck sake. The world isn't so different after all. Same shite, different circumstances._

"I sense there is a great deal to discuss," said Sansa, smiling graciously.

"Go," grinned Jon. "Rest. There is nothing that can't wait until after dinner."

No, nothing had changed. Whatever had been going on between himself and the little bird... it couldn't be erased, but it was over. The world wasn't ending any more. She'd get herself some moon tea, and take Brienne back as her shield, and marry some lord to secure Winterfell's beef supply or eastern flank or-

"I'm going to recommend that Jon offers you the Dreadfort," said Sansa.

"_What_?"

"It's one of the richest estates in the North and it needs a lord. You've rendered great service to the North since the wars began, and none will question your ability to lead."

Hurt flared inside him. "If you wanted me out of your sight, girl, you just had to ask. I don't need a bloody bribe. You wouldn't be the first wench to have regrets by the light of day."

Sansa went very still, and Clegane's feeble heart quailed at having hurt her.

"Maybe I have misunderstood," she said quietly, but deliberately. "Or perhaps I have not made myself clear. I'm going to ask Jon to give you the Dreadfort. Its lord will be one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the North. Once he has settled into his new estate, his status will be such that he could court any lady in the land - even those of the highest station - and his suit would not be looked upon unfavourably. Any lady, or none at all if that were his preference."

Clegane was speechless.

"You will have ample time to consider, and know that I expect nothing in return, whatever you decide. You have _earned _this honour. I shall see you at dinner."

_She will, _he thought, watching her walk towards her quarters. _She most certainly will._

The girl looked fragile as a bird, but the will underneath was strong as iron. He'd been underestimating her since that night at the inn. For an honourable Stark, there were no flings or secret liaisons. It was stunning to think about, but it seemed she truly wanted _this_ \- him - for the long run. She'd made up her mind, and now it was up to Clegane to make up his.

His ears were ringing. He was in way over his head. But if this was what drowning felt like, it felt very, very good.


End file.
